Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders / Cogitations and Confessions of an Aged Physician

by William A. Alcott

Dr. Thomas Hubbard, of Pomfret, Conn., long a President of the Medical Society in that State, was, on the contrary, accustomed to bleed almost all his patients. Yet both of these men were considered as eminently successful in their profession. How is it that treatment so exactly opposite should be almost, if not quite, equally successful?

There was a discussion in Boston, many years ago, between Dr. Watson, one of the most successful old-school practitioners of medicine, and a Thomsonian practitioner, whose name I have forgotten, in the progress of which the former made the open and unqualified declaration, that, in the course of four years' practice, he had drawn one hundred gallons of human blood, and that he was then on the use of his thirty-ninth pound of calomel.

Now both these men had full practice; and while one did little or nothing to break up disease or destroy the enemy, the other did a great deal; and yet both were deemed successful. Can we explain this any better than we can the facts in regard to Drs. Danforth and Hubbard?

Let us look at the case of Dr. M., of Boston, a successful allopathic practitioner. In order to satisfy his curiosity, with regard to the claims of homœopathy, he suddenly substituted the usual homœopathic treatment for allopathy, and pursued it two whole years with entire success. Curiosity still awake, he again exchanged his infinitesimal doses of active medicine for similar doses, as regards size, of fine flour, and continued this, also, for two years. The latter experiment, as he affirms, was quite as successful as the former.

Do not such facts as these point, with almost unerring certainty, to the inefficiency of all medical treatment? Do they not almost, if not quite, prove that when we take medicine, properly so called, or receive active medical treatment; we recover in spite of it? Is there any other rational way of accounting for the almost equal success of all sorts of treatment,—allopathic, botanic, homœopathic, hydropathic, etc.,—when in the hands of good, sound, common sense, and conjoined with good nursing and attendance? Is it not that man is made to live, and is tough, so that it is not easy to poison him to death?

But the most remarkable fact of this kind with which I am acquainted, is the case of Isaac Jennings, M.D., now of Ohio. He was educated at Yale College, in Connecticut. During the progress of his education, he served a sort of medical apprenticeship in the family of Prof. Eli Ives, of New Haven. He took his medical degree in 1812, and soon after this commenced the practice of his profession in Trumbull, in Fairfield County. Here, for eight years, he had ample opportunity to apply the principles with which, at the schools, he had been fully indoctrinated. In the summer of 1820, he removed, by special request, to Derby, nine miles from New Haven. Up to his second year in Derby, he pursued the usual, or orthodox, course of practice. The distance from his former field of labor was not so great but that he retained a portion of his old friends in that region. He was also occasionally called to the town of Huntington, lying partly between the two.

On meeting one day with Dr. Tisdale, of Bridgeport, an older physician than himself, he said to him, very familiarly, "Jennings, are you aware that we do far less good with our medicine than we have been wont to suppose?" He replied in the affirmative, and observed that he had been inclining to that opinion for some time. "Do you know," added Dr. Tisdale, "that we do a great deal more harm than good with medicine?" Dr. Jennings replied that he had not yet gone as far as that. Dr. Tisdale then proceeded to state many facts, corroborating the opinion he had thrown out concerning the impotency of medicine. These statements and facts were, to the mind of Dr. Jennings, like a nail fastened in a sure place.

From this time forth his medical scepticism increased, till he came, at length, to give his doubts the test of experiment. Accordingly, he substituted for his usual medicaments, bread pills and colored water; and for many years—I believe five or six—gave nothing else. The more rigidly he confined himself to these potions, the better he found his success, till his business was so extended, and his reputation so great, as to exclude all other medical men from his own immediate vicinity.

His great conscientiousness, as well as a desire of making known to his medical brethren what he believed to be true, and thus save them from the folly of dealing out that which he was assured was only a nuisance, especially under the shelter of what they supposed to be his example, led him, at length, to call a meeting of physicians, and reveal to them his discovery. The surprise was great; but greater or less, according to their tact for observation, and the length of their experience.

But the secret was now out, and Dr. Jennings soon began to lose practice. Instead of employing a man to give them bread pills and colored water, many chose to take care of themselves, and let the physician wholly alone; while a far greater number, though they dearly loved and highly respected Jennings, as an old friend and physician and an eminent Christian, began to seek medical counsel at other hands.